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Five Lessons Learnt This Week

Five Lessons Learnt is our weekly round-up of all the strange, off-beat and funny news of the week. Perfect for a bit of Friday afternoon entertainment and a light-hearted look at what’s been going on away from the charts!

This week in Five Lessons Learnt: The World Cup of Crisps, how hipsters saved real ale, free holidays thanks to bad Photoshop skills and a suspiciously-named dog…

1. You can buy bottled London air

Trendy east London district Shoreditch was first up, priced at £19.99 plus £10 postage and packaging. Yes, that is almost £30 for your very own jar of air polluted with car fumes and alcohol – and you even get to choose between an AM and PM smell.

Also available on the website is Brixton and Croydon, with air from more areas of London set to be available to purchase soon.

Since its foundation, the number of beer brands in circulation has risen from 300 to more than 11,000, and the rise of the hipster culture has brought a whole new audience of young people onto the craft beer scene.

So the founders of CAMRA have decided their work here is done and it’s time they re-focused their efforts elsewhere. Their new plan? Tackle the “pub crisis” that’s causing almost 30 pubs to close every single week. Well, if anyone’s up to the challenge of resurrecting the pubs that time forgot, it’s this lot…

3. Watch what you call your dog

A US man was stunned this week after his bank payment to his regular dog walker was stopped – because his dog’s name aroused suspicion. Bruce Francis attempted to pay his walker using the name of his nine-year-old pit bull, Dash, as a reference. All makes sense so far. But the payment was stopped by his bank and flagged to the US Treasury Department – all because ‘Dash’ sounded a bit like ‘Daesh’, which happens to be another term used for the self-declared Islamic State.

After being checked the payment eventually went through, and Bruce has said he has no problem with his payment being stopped and fully supports the bank’s decision to do anything we can to stop terrorism and the funding of terrorists. However, he did admit that his first thought on finding out the reason for his payment being stopped was that the measures would only stop “the world’s stupidest terrorist”. Quite…

Sevelyn is now probably the most-Photoshopped traveller in history, having been superimposed into skydiving in Dubai and even photobombing the famous Ellen Oscars selfie.

But now her dream trip to China is set to become a reality after Nairobi businessman Sam Gichuru offered to pay for her trip. He also joked/warned her internet fans that other attempts to snag a free trip through Photoshop wouldn’t work… drat.

5. Who won the World Cup of Crisps

Pickled Onion Monster Munch has been crowned champion of the World Cup of Crisps, hosted on Twitter by game show host Richard Osman. The nail-biting charity tournament was arranged to find out which snack would emerge victorious when it came down to the crunch – and in aid of Child’s i Foundation, which finds families for orphans.

Out of 42 crisp varieties, Monster Munch took the grand title. Wotsits came in runner-up, while Quavers and Walker’s Cheese and Onion narrowly missed out on the final, coming in third and fourth place respectively. Frazzles, Skips and Spicy Nik Naks all crashed out in the semi-finals. So far, the campaign has raised £4,000 and Betfair have also pledged to donate all losing stakes to the charity.

Don’t forget – to keep up-to-date with the best viral videos and funny news every week, sign up for our Fish Feed emails and you’ll get an update every Friday! Just click here or use the box below to sign up:

Katie is a writer and editor from the North East of England and is assistant editor at Littlefish FX. She has experience of editing everything from novels and humorous non-fiction books to science and technology theses, and is now turning her hand to the world of Forex.

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